The trouble with our talk about race

The racial mess we’re in is bigger than we realize. Versions of terror and brutality, for generations, have been wielded against black people, from slavery to segregation to lynching to the KKK, to all manner of prejudices, biases and micro-aggressions.

We have never properly reckoned with the problem. As a result, overt and covert forms of racism — against black, mixed, indigenous and other people of color — pervade American culture to this day.

Then along came this latest spate of police killings, each of them an outrage, and an assault on the collective human soul. It’s become all too repetitive, this vicious circle of “incident, protest, riot, calm.”

What’s promising is that the response in the larger society feels different this time. It’s dynamic. As if there’s finally a true awakening to the magnitude of a problem many are in denial about. It’s exciting to consider the possibility of race relations improving.

There’s reason for hope and optimism. And yet, looking closer, we find ourselves skeptical and more than a little concerned. A question looms in our minds: Could it be that the conversation on race in the U.S., as it’s emerged in these past few weeks, is creating as many problems as it’s attempting to resolve?

For all the earnest attempts to school the masses on race, we still so often talk about blacks and whites as though they are two clear, binary categories, and the only two that matter. It’s an oversimplification of the facts.

To truly move forward, we need to understand that blackness and whiteness — like all racial categories — are complicated, layered and paradoxical. Both labels contain within them all the diverse range of human experiences, in the U.S. and across the planet.

We suspect that, because it largely ignores this reality, the current conversation on race may do as much to reinforce race-based thinking as it does to address racism. The way we are “educating people” about racial problems is doubling as a form of social conditioning.

Here everyone, read this particular handful of books, watch these videos, say these approved phrases, repeat these words. Here everyone, gesture and posture appropriately. It’s surely unintentional, but it winds up reinscribing a narrow strand of race-thinking.

It’s an inadvertent mass brain-washing rather than an opportunity for genuine, deep, transformative education that touches the heart and mind.

We thought about this as we watched the “Sesame Street” CNN Town Hall for children and families.

It sounds so sensible to learn how to teach your young kids how to be anti-racist. The show shared an inspiring message. Excellent questions were asked, including: How can we grow the circle of who we care about and expand our hearts? How can we improve how we treat each other and how we perceive of each other? We found this instructive and wise.

The overriding theme of the show was, “we can do better,” and who could argue with that? Yet even as we were moved, we couldn’t help but give pause. Does it really make sense for a young child to have the seed planted within them to “do better”? Are they doing badly? Are they guilty of something?

Are we inadvertently planting shame and guilt in our kids by reflexively repeating certain mantras? Are we telling black viewers — planting within them a seed — that they are somehow inferior? Are we underlining their victim status, rendering it official?

Are we limiting the way young people see the world by demanding they think of themselves, first and foremost, as members of a race rather than, first and foremost, as human beings?

Race-based thinking will never solve the problem of racism. Strident race-based thinking only adds to the problem. It’s turning out that racism has a kissing cousin in this sudden rise of rigid race-thinking. It’s a pollution in the air with a suffocating effect. All of us must learn to think more nimbly. All of us must breathe.